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Socioanalysis 18, 2016

The Use of Detention as a Defence Against


Intolerable Social Anxiety Towards
Asylum Seekers
David Lawlor & Mannie Sher
Socioanalysis 18: 2016 (40 - 52)
The movements of peoples across the world are causing grave concern for politicians, government
agencies, humanitarian organisations and individual citizens. The immigrants fleeing poverty, war and
tyrannical regimes are seen every day on our televisions. We see immigrants crossing the Mediterranean
in broken-down boats. In South East Asia Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia are turning back boatloads
of refugees fleeing Burma, leaving 6,000 people stranded at sea. At Calais thousands of people are living
in destitute conditions whilst risking their lives to stow away in lorries. In London a man fell to his death
onto a roof being stowed away in an aircraft from South Africa. These scenes of human desperation
are now every day occurrences. At the same time more overt political conflict is emerging from the
European countries that take in the immigrants. Italy and Greece want a sharing out of the migrants
known as compulsory burden sharing but other European countries are not willing to participate.
This paper focuses on an aspect of the immigration crisis namely the asylum seeking and detention
centers of the UK. The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations was commissioned to review the mental
health care of detainees in Immigration Removal Centers. This paper makes use of the concepts of
system psychodynamics, open systems and boundary management, and social systems as a defence
against anxiety. We examine the organisational culture of IRCs where people are detained. Our paper
focuses on how asylum seekers are treated in removal centres, particularly in relation to their mental
health needs. We suggest that there is confusion in the conscious and unconscious understanding of the
primary task. We propose that there is a task conflict that manifests in the socio-technical system itself
in the organisation of the centres. At the same time we examine the casework system that is engaged in
processing asylum applications.
Key words: Asylum seekers, social defences, socio-technical systems, mental health

Introduction
This paper describes a consultancy project with the Immigration and Border Directorate
of the United Kingdom Home Office. The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR)
conducted a review of how detainees mental health was managed within their Immigration
Removal Centers (IRC). UK Immigration Removal Centres are:
holding centres for foreign nationals awaiting decisions on their asylum claims or awaiting deportation following a
failed application. Previously known as detention centres, the name was formally changed to removal centres under
the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 to reflect the part played by detention in the removal of failed
asylum-seekers and others. (Politics.co.uk)

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The Use of Detention as a Defence

In our review we met with senior management, caseworkers, health care staff and detention
staff as well as detainees. Senior management includes staff based centrally at the Home Office
and staff that work and manage the individual IRCs. Caseworkers have responsibility for
managing the individual asylum claims. Health care staff is comprised of doctors and nurses
who see detainees in the IRCs. Detention staff is similar to prison wardens.

Conceptual Framework: Socio-Technical Systems Theory


The concept of the socio-technical system (Emery & Trist, 1990) is meant to optimise
all the variables and sub-systems in the organisation and increase the possibility of choice.
However, in an environment of no choice, staff is constantly confronted by contradictions and
impossible dilemmas, because the exercise of restrictive powers of detention and removal are
the main objectives. There is tension between waiting for a decision to stay and waiting to be
removed, having failed to be allowed to stay; this is central to our analysis. We found Lawrences
(1977) analysis of the primary task a useful way of thinking about the work of IRCs and
illuminated the tension between detention and care. We posit two groups which require care
in detention - one group sustaining hope of resettlement and the other with dashed hope. This
distinction makes much clearer the degree of emotional containment required by detainer and
detainee alike. It also begs the question of why both groups are held in the same centre and at
what level lies the responsibility for this decision. (We are grateful to our reviewer for this idea
of the IRCs holding two distinct groups).
These dilemmas affect staff morale, efficiency and effectiveness of the detention and
removal system. Ultimately, all results removal or permission to stay satisfy one group and
not another. Socio-technical systems theory emphasises the inter-relatedness of technical and
socio-psychological factors in work alongside political and economic factors. In the detentionremoval scenario individual wishes and State policies are in permanent conflict with each other.
The workforce is caught between implementing State decisions (the phenomenal primary task)
and their personal sense of compassion and humanity for the detainees (the existential primary
task). In order to protect themselves from unbearable conflicts, individual and institutional
defences are employed: indifference towards suffering, lumping everyone together, denial,
disbelief and repression of feeling, and blaming others for the problems or lack of solution
to problems. This is an example of an impasse, created by unconscious mutually-reinforcing
gridlock of projective identification and introjective identification. The forms of work
organisation in the IRCs do not optimise a good fit of social, psychological, technical, political
and economic factors.
In IRCs individuals, detainees and workers, cannot take up their roles easily and they
cannot manage themselves in role. Incidents of dislocation, breakage of rules, misconduct
and neglect occur. In relation to mental health issues in IRCs, socio-technical systems theory
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Socioanalysis 18, 2016

can be used to understand how integrated in practice are the different departments, units
and sections of the Home Office Immigration Service, and how coordinated these units are
with its partner organisations like health, the justice systems and out-sourced commercial
companies that provide services for the Home Office. We asked ourselves and the clients how
collaborative were the different professions that provide psychiatric and physical health services
for detainees on behalf of the Home Office? How well were the causes and effects of mental
ill-health understood and practiced by the staff in the IRCs, the Home Office, the solicitors and
the courts? Mental illness in our view cannot only be located in individuals, but can also be
caused and spread by the social situations people are in.

Socio-technical systems and the concept of social systems as a defence


against anxiety
The concept of social systems as a defence against anxiety (Menzies Lyth, 1960) postulates that in
order to avoid the anxieties aroused by the work of the organisation, people develop defences to
avoid psychological involvement with the people in their charge.
These defences include:
1. The idea that professionals are interchangeable all should look the same (wearing
uniforms to avoid personal elements of appearance) and should be willing to move to different
workplaces at short notice.
2. Breaking down tasks into a series of mundane routines that can be repeated with many
people (e.g. one professional performing the same task on different people, another professional
performing a different task with the same people) rather than each professional extending indepth care with one person.
3. Avoiding expression of individual initiative or decision-making by making all professional
and/or administrative tasks prescribed from above
4. Discouraging expressions of emotion or interest in individuals.

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These defences are aimed at reducing the anxiety aroused by intimate physical and
emotional involvement with detainees. These social defences are embedded in the culture
and routines of the organisation and woven into the identity and practices of the staff in their
training programmes. These defences are ineffective because the staff is still subject to the
difficult emotional demands of the work and they become disengaged from the detainees. This
means that they are not able to effectively engage with the causes of their anxiety. By not being
able to think and acknowledge the impact of their work, they are not able to learn from their
experiences or to work through feelings of loss, helplessness or guilt. This results in workers not
engaging emotionally with their charges and thus unconsciously allowing less effective methods
of work to prevail.

The Use of Detention as a Defence

Systems psychodynamics
The TIHR team was faced by walls of resistance by the various groups, centres, subdivisions and categories within the Home Office, the various stakeholders outside the
Home Office, within the UK and internationally, making the team wonder how well they
understand the meaning of immigration for immigrants and the host public. We wondered
how well integrated were the efforts of the state institutions to address the problems of illegal
immigrants. There did not seem to be much understanding of the construct of crossing
psychological boundaries in the relationship between mental illness and mental health.
In crossing organisational boundaries in inter-departmental relationships; in crossing
sector boundaries between the Home Office and its out-sourced providers, political dogma
triumphed over humanitarian concerns and this influenced staff in the IRCs.

Containment
Management is expected to contain aspects of the workforce that it is unable to contain
by itself, for example, its vision of fairness and equity, to ensure collectively a good in-flow of
work and outcomes and a fair distribution of the rewards. Managers and staff in systems and
groups find themselves in interactions with one another in order to find ways of giving meaning
to their work experiences. They also look for mechanisms that defend themselves against
uncertainty and anxiety and against the destructive prospects of change. An important aspect of
the role of management is to serve as a container during the working through of any change.
The need for working through occurs when intense feelings that threaten relationships (interpersonal, inter-group, international) develop between people or groups of people, as between
the detainees and the workforce and between the workforce and management. The emotions
that characterise these relationships include rejection, damage, hurt, loss, unfairness, blame,
frustration, anger, fear, distress, shame and guilt, etc. These feelings need a safe containing
space to be worked through so that they could be traced and accepted, whatever their cause, and
faced one by one, over and over again, to the point at which they are sufficiently weakened to
lose their effect. This working through happens by talking, dialogue, discussion, conversation,
debate and argument. There was not much evidence of this facility in the IRCs.

Findings and analysis


The Immigration and Border Policy Directorate of the the UK Home Office claimed that
they had well developed policy and procedures but they also asserted that they did not work
very well in practice. Decisions against individual detainees are balanced against policy, yet cases
continue to be brought before court for illegal detention. The reasons for this are complex and
were reviewed during the course of the project from organisational, systemic and socio-dynamic
perspectives.

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A tentative conclusion is that problems surrounding mental health issues of detainees in the
IRCs are linked to the complexity inherent in a system whose working task is predicated upon
multiple and contradictory tasks. The task comprises the primary task of detention and removal
from the UK; which often conflicts with the second task of a duty of care towards detainees
and respecting their dignity and human rights. Lawrence (1977) developed the idea of the
primary task as a tool for examining organisational behaviour by proposing that people within
an enterprise pursue different kinds of primary task. The normative primary task is the formal or
official task, the operationalisation of the broad aims of the organisation, and is usually defined
by the chief stakeholders. The existential primary task is the task the people within the enterprise
believe they are carrying out, the meaning or interpretations they put on their roles and
activities. The phenomenal primary task is the task that can be inferred from peoples behaviour,
and of which they may not be consciously aware.
This contradiction and conflict in the different kinds of primary task is demonstrated by the
following statements:
From the point of view of senior management (normative primary task):
We have a duty of care, but mental health issues are secondary to our primary task. We are in control of our entry and
exit points of our own systems when the detainees are our own cases. In many instances, we are able to identify mental
health issues early and clearly. Our job is detention and removal, but there is a group of people in the middle that are not
so ill as to be sectioned, and it is with this group that we have often lost our cases in court.

From the caseworkers point of view (existential primary task):


Reasons for detention are not well defined. We pay special attention where there is high risk of harm to the public.
The spectrum of risk makes it difficult to arrive at satisfactory decisions. Sometimes, there are conflicting positions that
complicate matters for caseworkers. We have to be risk-averse when it comes to public safety.

From the interviews with detainees point of view (phenomenal primary task):
Staff needs to recognise what people tell them regardless of whether it is true or false. We are locked up and this is
difficult for vulnerable people. It is like a prison here. Either we have served our sentences or we should be sent to a real
prison. Why are ill people here? Everyone here has their stories, but what bring us together are our experiences that this
feels like a prison. We are treated as prisoners, but we are not prisoners. Staff backs each other up instead of providing
care. As prisoners, we are helpless and vulnerable.

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Analysis of the primary task in these terms can highlight discrepancies between what an
organisational group says it sets out to do and what is actually happening. This analysis helped
us to clarify and understand how the activities, roles and experiences of the individuals and
sub-systems relate to each other and to the enterprise as a whole. (Obholzer and Roberts,1994).
Confusion in helping institutions and in the society they serve about what their primary task
is (or should be), often results in inadequate task definitions, which provide little guidance to
staff or managers about what they should be doing, or how to do it, or whether they are doing
it effectively (Menzies Lyth, 1979). Although the contradictory nature of the interpretation

The Use of Detention as a Defence

of the primary task was not immediately evident, the fragmented task was projected into the
internal sub-systems and into the wider network of agencies. The different interpretations of the
task were acted out through the conscious and unconscious pressures on the Home Office - to
speed up the removal processes and to relax them. The immigration removal system comprises
a number of sub-tasks that require collaboration with public protection agencies, like the
police, courts and prisons; and with care agencies like the NHS, local authorities and voluntary
organisations. These organisations then take up different interpretations of the task, i.e. police,
courts and prisons focus on removal, and health, local government and voluntary organisations
focus on the care task. This can lead to contradictory communications and decision-making
conflicts.

Examples:
1. Confusion regarding the working arrangements of the immigration system.
2. Either excessively porous or excessively rigid internal boundaries between IRC custody staff,
caseworkers and health care staff; as well as those with external caseworkers, senior managers
and policy-makers.
3. Flawed external boundaries between the Home Office Immigration Service and the other
key agencies, such as the NHS and the legal system and
4. The extraordinary large number of transactions required to assess individual detainees
needs, reach a decision, and develop and enforce care plans and/or removal.
The relationships between policy makers, managers, detention centre staff, healthcare staff
and caseworkers can be characterised by intense processes of mutual blame and defensiveness.
The two groups use each other to export and import wrong-doing and failure into the
other. By this we mean that each group carries the one element of the contradictory task.
Detention worker staff works at keeping people in the IRCs and removing them, whereas
healthcare staff members are focussed on the overall physical and psychological needs of the
detainees. This distinction of function may be sensible but it also serves as a basis for inter-staff
group conflict.
This splitting of the task is detrimental to the efficiency of the immigration service. It
results in mutual blaming processes and collusive relationships in which the different parts
of the total system engage adversely with each other. The beneath-the-surface reason for this
split is to protect staff from the potentially overwhelming psychologically and emotionally
distressing traumas of the detainees. Groups can be under pressure and they may use these
defensive mechanisms to protect themselves from feelings of helplessness and hopelessness by
placing responsibilities onto the other groups.
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These dynamic processes of blame and recrimination are replicated throughout the whole
system. The most obvious examples are between IRCs staff members, who are essentially
information gatherers, and the central office case workers who are charged with decisionmaking responsibilities for removal. Likewise, there are similar systemic dynamics operating in
the relationship of the Home Office with the NGO sector: with mutual projections of hostility
and mistrust between voluntary organisations, special interest groups, and charities on one
hand, and the Home Office on the other hand. Responsibility for resolving these complex interorganisational difficulties may be left to the private sector. The unspoken wish/hope is that
sub-contractors and private sector agencies, through commercial contracts, would more easily
resolve these dynamic tensions.
The situation of the detainees being removed creates powerful anxieties both for the
detainees and for the staff who is looking after them. Those detainees who are already
vulnerable are likely to deteriorate. The complex system around them of caseworkers, subcontractors, solicitors and external agencies, which are often in conflict with one another feeds
into a sense of powerlessness, hopeless and fear of the future. Issues of accountability and
how the various sub-systems relate with each other, raise questions about the management of
transactions at crossover points (Miller, 1993). Tensions and difficulties in decision-making
could be examined, discussed, monitored and remedied. However, the system is mostly
fragmented, confused and when under stress, falls back on exchanges of blame, denunciation
and culpability.

Our findings
Impacts that affect the work
Outside influences can impact negatively on the work, such as competition between targets
and deadlines; therefore, some cases do not go the way the Home Office would have thought
appropriate. The Home Office takes this seriously because litigation may result.

Resources
The question of resources is an issue. There are not enough psychiatric nurses and there
is no available internal Home Office psychiatric opinion. Adjudicating conflicting medical
opinions is left to non-medical caseworkers. More training is needed, more input to sensitise
staff at all levels to mental health issues.

Culture
All agreed that the current culture (Schein, 1992) in the IRCs will continue and will
override any new resources inputs, such as training, more staff and different providers. New
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and more staff do not necessarily change things. There is a definite detainee culture that
promotes all levels of expectation. It is a convoluted and illogical position as detainees prolong
their detention about which they complain. They are encouraged by external groups and their
own peer groups. Detainee cultures mutually reinforce one another, supported by their legal
representatives and other external bodies. The cultural dynamic has become entrenched. All felt
that the descriptions of detainee cultures rang true creating a sense of hopelessness about the
situation.
The Tavistock Institute team spoke about ways of introducing culture change. The starting
place was to clearly state the task of the IRC. It could simply be stated that all activity in the
IRCs is about preparing people to leave for their countries of origin or to be released in the UK. This would
mean a realignment of the staff culture and the working relationships within the IRCs. There is
the challenge of achieving leaving targets and removing people who wish to remain in the UK.
This is not to deny that there are detainees who are appealing against removal and may have a
legitimate right to stay and maybe successful in their appeal. These are the complexities of the
system.

Task
At meetings we discussed the concept of the task, in relation to: (i) the main task of
detention and removal and (ii) a secondary task of health and care of detainees at the same
standard of the NHS. Staff who is responsible for carrying out the detention and removal task
are set up in opposition to detainees who are resisting removal. This process and dynamics then
negatively impact on the mental health of the detainees. In order to be re-positioned around
the task of helping detainees accept the reality of removal, the staff culture needs to move to
being an institution that helps detainees to accept the facts of removal. This does not deny
peoples rights of appeal. They run in parallel. The task of detention and removal should not be
privileged over the task of welfare, they need to run in tandem. The image of IRCs that came to
mind was one of a waiting room, but in the current culture, the only task is one of opposition
and resistance on both sides, staff and detainees, leading, in a worst scenario, to a general state
of paralysis. The effect on individuals is to exacerbate their mental health problems. The longer
they stay in limbo the increased chances of their mental health deteriorating leading to appeals
in the courts.

Major Complexity in the System


The high numbers of migrants with problematic immigration status affect capacity issues.
But, it emerged that the state of mind of the staff also proved to be problematic, which is
illustrated by the following vignette:
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N., a detention staff member, says that this is a sad place, but he tries to keep himself happy. He also explains that a
significant number of detained people have mental health problems. N. warns me about the lying - paedophiles saying
they had been in prison for hitting someone. It is a problem, he says, sorting out the truth from lies. N. has a degree but
cannot find work in his field, so this job has to do.

Detainees claimed they need more support from the officers:


They try to take the piss out of us and cause problems. Officers back each other Some are good, but some of the staff
do bad things, e.g. looking for arguments, causing problems, i.e. racism. But nothing can be donethe staff just do their
job by the book. Treatment by the staff should be non-judgemental.

Staff confirmed that the state of the whole IRC system was very troubled: detainees are
generally unwell because of their situation, detention staff is challenged, and the health care
staff is overwhelmed and exhausted. There are limited resources that often lead to mistakes
with medication, etc. Adding to the complexities is the profile of the detainees, the wide variety
of cultures, disadvantaged backgrounds in their home countries and in the UK and diverse
vulnerabilities.
F. says that he is kept in his room and not allowed out. He says he isnt eating and is on hunger strike. He doesnt talk
to anyone. He says that he had mental health problems before he was detained. His medication doesnt help and that
being detained makes him ill. He says the medication should be better, but no one is helping him. Others in the Centre
are doing better than him. He has not been offered any counselling. He has no visitors as his family refuses to visit him.
His mood is low and he speaks slowly. He seems resigned and helpless. Both arms are covered in cuts. Some of the scars
look fairly new.

The staff in IRCs faces a difficult task; they work in a difficult arena and the task is
complicated by immigration legislation and by working with an unsettled population.
Administrative processes are complicated and detainees live in a limbo world unable to
influence their futures. Detainees have different types of mental health problems, for instance,
people with histories of torture, human trafficking and other causes of post-traumatic stress
disorder, which deteriorate rapidly while in detention. The situation, was described by a central
office policy-maker, as a mess:
We are paying out millions in compensation for wrong ful detention and our policy is about getting value for money!
That is not happening. We need proper guidance in mental health. If we argued on the grounds of efficiency savings,
that would be welcomed, but the risk to our reputation is huge. If we could accurately identify the severity of mental
health cases, that would improve things. There are 1,400 beds in 11 centres. We simply dont know how many illegal
immigrants there are.

Fragmentation
There are faulty boundaries at all levels between sub-systems within the IRCs, between
IRCs and other Home Office departments and between Home Office departments and other
external agencies. This was exemplified by health care arrangements with the NHS who said:
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We are the middle people trying to sort out huge bureaucratic problems between the Home Office and the NHS
systems.

Detention staff also acknowledged disconnection between themselves:


We dont normally see each other. More meetings like this would be welcome. We work independently and only
communicate via email or phone.

IRC caseworkers said that they are disconnected from the health care workers and other
agencies with which they need to work on a daily basis, e.g. solicitors act independently and
against the system, deportation flights are cancelled, vehicles delayed, flights are missed, etc.
Further evidence of systemic fragmentation was provided by the IRCs management who
reported difficulties with external agencies, and pointed out inconsistencies between the IRCs
themselves with different ethos, arrangements and treatments in the different IRCs. They
complained about a lack of knowledge about the different parts of the organisational system,
and urged better communications between the different structures. They feel unable to achieve
good inter-agency cooperation or to improve the relationship with health care staff and
cooperation with other internal immigration staff.

Confusion in the System


Assessing mental health of detainees was an altogether confusing process. Seriously
mentally ill detainees are managed, but the information required in their management is often
inadequate. Complications occur when solicitors demand and get independent mental health
assessments and unqualified IRC staff are expected to compare the different assessments and
make judgements. IRC Staff undertaking mental health assessments are frequently not given
information by the detainees, by other staff, or by other involved agencies. The confusion is
often present in the detainees themselves. They may not know or understand how the system
works and their mental state can add to their confusion.
Staff would like to see proper risk assessments for all detainees. They are often not kept
informed of detainees conditions, situations, and statuses; scheduled interviews, flow of
information, reviews and final decision-making on individual cases.
Complexity, fragmentation and confusion often result from detainees falling between
structures and systems. Detainees falling between structures are a concern because of fears
that errors may result in, for example, offenders of serious offences being released. Delays in
decision-making can exacerbate individual mental health situations.

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Recommendations
1. The TIHR team proposed that the Joint Steering Group (JSG was the main group that
TIHR related to as the group managing and overseeing the project) becoming a Futures
Group that could create a design for future structures and procedures. Change management is
a complex yet very efficient process if determined by a dedicated group with appropriate power,
authority and understanding of the issues.
2. The Home Office and IRCs needed to move from a culture of prison towards IRCs being
re-constituted as temporary transitional institutions whose primary task is aiding, helping
and preparing detainees to leave the UK or to be released in the community. The concept of a
temporary transitional institution is a useful set of ideas to help staff organise around the new
task. The implications of moving to the new task are that staff would have to think about their
roles and their tasks in a fundamentally different way.
3. We recommended that the approach to solving the problem of increasing mental health
problems among detainees needed to be a whole-system one. Organisation for removal
lay with the casework staff; detention lay with detention staff and care lay with healthcare
staff. This separation of tasks led to the development of different and competing cultures that
ultimately sabotage the main task of removal.
4. Our findings suggest that it is not lack of knowledge on the challenges and issues that
prevents the Immigration Directorate from working more efficiently. Rather, it is the conflict
caused by the task confusion that leads detainees to fall between organisational systems and
cultures.

Conclusion
As one would expect in vast systems of different State institutions authority is dispersed
among the various groups in the Immigration Directorate. The levels of authority derived from
legislation and the policies and procedures that interpret the legislation are seldom coherent.
The large numbers of different groups working with detainees have different interpretations
of the policies and procedures leading to arbitrary decision-making in relation to detainees and
their mental welfare.

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Managing care for detainees mental well-being is regarded as non-core and the Home
Offices duty of care towards vulnerable people is out-sourced, sub-optimising safeguards that
provide for detainees mental health. The Home Office seems unaware or unable to ensure
psychological ownership of the detention and removal task between the numerous contractors
providing services for the Home Office, leading to instances of gridlock, moral hazard,
obfuscations of accountability and potentially wasting money in relation to the removal and
detention of illegal immigrants. Undeniably, organisational behaviour impacts on the welfare of
detainees.

The Use of Detention as a Defence

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Karnac: London.
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experience and organisational accountability in A. Balfour, M Morgan and C. Vincent.
How Couple Relationships Shape our World: Clinical Practice, Research, and Policy Perspectives.
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Miller, E.J. & Rice, A.K. (1967) Systems of Organisation: Task and Sentient Systems and their Boundary
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Trist, E.L. & Murray, H. (1990) The Social Engagement of the Social Sciences: A Tavistock Antholog y,
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Trist, E.L. & Murray, H. (1993) The Social Engagement of the Social Sciences: A Tavistock Antholog y,
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Biographical note
Dr David Lawlor is the Director of the Centre for Social Work Supervision and Consultancy. He is a Professional
Partner at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations He was formerly a Consultant Social Worker at the Tavistock
& Portman NHS Trust where he was the Head of the Social Work Discipline and member of the Senior Management
Team. David trained in organisational consultancy and psychoanalytic psychotherapy at the Tavistock Clinic. He works
as an organisational consultant and coach. He helps organisations learn and develop through training and consultancy
interventions. He works with the technical and emotional challenges involved in implementing change.
Mannie Sher, PhD, TQAP, FBA is Principal Researcher and Consultant and Director of the Group Relations
Programme at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London. From this role he manages assignments and
consults to top teams on their leadership roles. Mannies research and consultancy work focuses on the impact of
thought on the dialectic relationship between social constructivism, the unconscious and liberal democracy.

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Relying on a total systems approach of open systems thinking, socio-technical systems theory and systems
psychodynamics, integrated with action learning, group relations and traditional organisational and culture change
methods, Mannie has delivered successful change programmes to many private and public sector organisations in the
UK and internationally.

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